Zhang Shen’s Comprehensive Explanations on Calligraphy (Fashu Tongshi): A calligraphy companion of the early ming dynasty

2011 ◽  
Vol 16 (01) ◽  
pp. 61-93
Author(s):  
Pietro de Laurentis
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Ming Dynasty ◽  
Chinese Calligraphy ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Confucian Scholar

This paper presents an early Ming companion on Chinese calligraphy, the Comprehensive Explanations on Calligraphy (Fashu tongshi 法書通釋) as well as the life of its author Zhang Shen 張紳 (fl. half of the fourteenth century). By analysing the content and the quotations included therein, the present article traces the history and outlines the structure of Zhang’s compendium, while providing also a preliminary translation of the introductory sections of the ten chapters which constitute the entire work. Also, at the same time, through the analysis of biographical materials about the author, Zhang’s life, his official career, personality, and literary works are elucidated. It is concluded that Zhang Shen, an expert classicist as well as a Confucian scholar, whose purpose in his Explanations is to expose and clarify a series of fundamental questions related to the study and practice of calligraphy, which are pertinent to the analysis and interpretation of classical treatises of calligraphy.

Some Thoughts About Genre in Old Javanese Literature

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter John Worsley
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Poetic Form ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Present Essay ◽  
Epic Poem ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Poetic Work

Robson in 1983 and 1988 in his reconsideration of the poetics of kakawin epics and Javanese philology drew readers’ attention to the importance of genre for the history of ancient Javanese literature. Aoyama in his study of the kakawin Sutasoma in 1992, making judicious use of Hans Jauss’s concept of “horizon of expectation”, offered the first systematic discussion of the genre of Old Javanese literary works. The present essay offers a commentary on the terms which mpu Monaguna and mpu Prapañca, authors of the thirteenth century epic kakawin Sumanasāntaka and the fourteenth century Deśawarṇana, themselves, employ to refer to the generic characteristics of their poems. Mpu Monaguna referred to his epic poem as a narrative work (kathā), written in a prakṛt, Old Javanese, and rendered in the poetic form of a kakawin and finally as a ritual act intended to enable the poet to achieve apotheosis with his tutelary deity and his poem to be the means of transforming the world, in particular to ensure the wellbeing of the readers, listeners, copyists and those who possessed copies of his poetic work. Mpu Prapañca described his Deśawarṇana differently. Also written in Old Javanese and in the poetic form of a kakawin—he refers to his work variously as a narrative work (kathā), a chronicle (śakakāla or śakābda), a praise poem (kastawan) and also as a ritual act designed to enable the author in an ecstatic state of rapture (alangö), and filled with the power and omniscience of his tutelary deity, to ensure the continued prosperity of the realm of Majapahit and to secure the rule of his king Rājasanagara. The essay considers each of these literary categories.

scholarly journals The Theory of Frame in Rejecting the Rejectionists’ Position on the Armenian Genocide

2015 ◽  
Vol 11 (1 (13)) ◽  
pp. 167-179
Author(s):  
Seda Gasparyan
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
Cognitive Linguistics ◽  
Armenian Genocide ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Reliable Instrument

The focus of the present article is the fabricated nature of some rejectionists’ interpretations of the Armenian Genocide brought out by the theory of frame – a reliable instrument widely applicable in cognitive linguistics. Referring to the information accumulated and stored in the memory of humanity and actually reflected in different dictionaries, literary works, official correspondence and documents, the author draws the readers’ attention to the background significance of the concepts Armenian and Turk in the cognizance and evaluation of the genocidal events in Western Armenia at the beginning of the 20th century.

scholarly journals L’encaix de la narrativa sense ficció de Víctor Labrado en el paradigma de la novel·la històrica valenciana

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 ◽  
pp. 329
Author(s):  
Dari Escandell
Keyword(s):  
Civil War ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Spanish Civil War ◽  
Historical Novel ◽  
Civil Conflict ◽  
Past Century ◽  
Historical Novels ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Past Time ◽  
Non Fiction

Resum: L’escriptor valencià Víctor Labrado (Sueca, 1956) s’ha erigit com un dels grans referents contemporanis en el camp de la novel·la de no-ficció en català, subgènere narratiu que conjumina la intenció metanovel·lesca amb fidedignes discursos testimonials. Ara bé, ¿les obres cabdals de Labrado –peculiars, idiosincràtiques i gens usuals– poden ser considerades també, sense subterfugis ni matisos, novel·la històrica? A grans trets: trames guerracivilistes empeltades d’entrevistes, dosis generoses de periodisme documental i absència gairebé absoluta de ficció. La tècnica i l’estil propi no suposen, però, cap impediment perquè molts llibres seus siguen alhora novel·la històrica, si fem cas dels topoi convinguts per la crítica especialitzada. No debades, aquests exemplars esdevenen, al capdavall, testimoni viu d’un temps passat; vivències i peripècies de gent anònima que rescaten de l’oblit, des de la particularitat més universal, la realitat valenciana d’un segle passat vilment estigmatitzat pel conflicte civil de l’any 1936 i la dictadura consegüent. ¿N’hi ha prou amb això, però, perquè aquesta etiqueta o clixé siga atribuïble també a la resta de la seua obra i trajectòria? El present article analitza a nivell tècnic, argumental i conceptual els llibres essencials de Labrado per tal de determinar quina part de la seua novel·lística sense ficció pot o no considerar-se al seu torn novel·la històrica.Paraules clau: Víctor Labrado, novel·la sense ficció, novel·la històrica, literatura catalana, valencià.Abstract: The Valencian writer Víctor Labrado (Sueca, 1956) has emerged as one of the great contemporary references in the field of the non-fiction novel in Catalan, a narrative subgenre that combines the fictional intention with real testimonial speeches. However, can Labrado’s capital books –peculiar, idiosyncratic and unusual– be considered also, without subterfuges or hints, historical novels? Broadly speaking: are his Spanish civil war plots grafted with interviews, generous doses of documentary journalism and almost absolute absence of fiction, historical novels? Its techniques and style are no impediment to say so, if we pay attention to the topoi agreed by the specialized critic. In fact, these novels become, in short, a living testimony of our past time: they rescue from oblivion the experiences and adventures of anonymous people, from the most universal particularity, and the Valencian reality of a past century stigmatized by the civil conflict of 1936 and the consequent dictatorship. Is that enough, however, to attribute this label to the rest of his literary works? This paper analyses the techniques, the plots and the concepts of Labrado’s essential books to determine what part of his nonfiction novels may or may not be considered historical.Keywords: Víctor Labrado, nonfiction novel, historical novel, Catalan literature, Valencian

scholarly journals The Parish Clergy of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries: The Alexander Prize Essay, 1911–12

1912 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 89-128
Author(s):  
H. G. Richardson
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Black Death ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Economic Forces ◽  
Parish Clergy ◽  
Parish Priests ◽  
Prize Essay ◽  
The Middle Ages

Until the thirteenth century records touching the parish clergy are scanty, but thereafter they increase in bulk and, with the fourteenth century, there exist, side by side, a number of literary works which afford more than a passing glance at their lives and deeds. The parish priests and clerks of these centuries were not perhaps typical of the mediaeval period, since no century or centuries will afford a type of any class or institution which will be true for the whole of the Middle Ages; and it is possible that the tenthcentury parish and its people resembled the parish and people of the fourteenth century as little—or as much—as the Elizabethan parish resembled the parish of the present day. The changes that affected so profoundly the organisation of the manor during the course of the Middle Ages did not leave its counterpart, the parish, unaltered; and the same economic forces that helped to make the villein a copyholder and serfdom an anachronism, helped also to raise the chaplain's wages from five to eight marks within thirty years of the Black Death. But although the

scholarly journals The differentiation between elegance and popularity in the orthography of popular literature of the Ming Dynasty and its causes

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-44
Author(s):  
Zhang Meilan ◽  
Zhan Hao
Keyword(s):  
Ming Dynasty ◽  
Cultural Awareness ◽  
Popular Literature ◽  
The West ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Modern Fiction ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Journey To The West ◽  
Water Margin ◽  
The Ming Dynasty

Through examination of variants in two versions of Jinpingmei, three versions of Water Margin, two versions of Journey to the West, and between relevant sections of Qingpingshantang Scripts, Ancient and Modern Fiction, Jingshi Tongyan, and Amazing Stories, the existence of two trends of elegance and popularity in the orthography of different versions and literary works may be detected. Those texts with a more elegant character have been largely influenced by a strategy of standardized orthography, which is closely related to the creation purpose, knowledge, and cultural awareness of the authors, the willingness of booksellers to produce and sell such works, and their target consumers and readership. The differentiation between elegance and popularity in the character of literary works truly reflects the divergence of different texts within different social strata, which is not only a linguistic and philological question, but also a sociological one.

Shaykh Bālī-Efendi on the ṣafavidsY

1957 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 437-450 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Minorsky
Keyword(s):  
Ottoman Empire ◽  
Present Article ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Main Subject ◽  
The North ◽  
Northern Side ◽  
North Western

The contents of the document which forms the main subject of the present article are somewhat slender and cannot be appreciated outside the context of the struggles between the Ottomans and the Safavids for the incorporation of the Turkman tribes settled in the territories separating their states. Many points of the situation await further investigation and our summary will be as brief as the complicated subject admits.The home of the Ottoman dynasty was in the north-western corner of Anatolia, but, by the middle of the fourteenth century, the Turks had crossed over to the northern side of the Straits and the Balkan territories became the nursery of the Ottoman empire.

Rolle and the Pattern of Tracts in ‘The Pore Caitif’

Traditio ◽  
1983 ◽  
Vol 39 ◽  
pp. 456-465 ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Teresa Brady
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Special Group ◽  
Richard Rolle

The anonymous compiler of the fourteenth-century Middle English treatise known as The Pore Caitif made extensive use of three works of Richard Rolle. His borrowings are from Emendatio vitae, The Form of Living, and The Commentary on the Canticles, and appear in eight tracts of a special group of ten pieces he calls ‘summe short sentencis exciting men to heuenli desiir’ (fol. 1v). Passages from Rolle's Form of Living were used in PC, ‘Desiir of Ihesu,’ ‘Of Mekenes,’ and ‘Of Actif Liif and Comtemplatif Liif.’ Sections from Emendatio vitae appear in PC, ‘Of Vertuous Pacience,’ ‘ϸe Councel of Christ,’ ‘Of Temptacioun,’ and ‘Desiir of Ihesu.’ A brief section of Rolle's Commentary on the Canticles is the source of the entire PC tract ‘ϸe Name of Ihesu,’ as Hope Emily Allen suggested in her monumental study of Rolle. A portion of this same source served for the first half of PC, ‘Of Mannes Wille,’ as Michael G. Sargent recently pointed out. The purpose of the present article is to suggest that the compiler of The Pore Caitif was indebted to Rolle not only for specific passages, but for the very schema and arrangement of his ten tracts of short sentences. It is my belief that Rolle's Emendatio vitae and The Form of Living, the two works of which the PC compiler made the most substantive use, were the governing influence on the order and arrangement of the ten short sentences.

Reconstructing ‘John Lelamour’s’ Herbal: The Linguistic Evidence

2017 ◽  
Vol 135 (4) ◽  
pp. 669-699
Author(s):  
David Moreno Olalla
Keyword(s):  
Present Article ◽  
Middle English ◽  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
English Translation ◽  
Linguistic Variation ◽  
Important Work ◽  
Ample Evidence ◽  
Linguistic Evidence ◽  
Linguistic Approach

AbstractTwenty years ago, George R. Keiser showed that the mutilated last quire of Lincoln Cathedral, Dean and Chapter Library, MS 91 had once contained a herbal written in Middle English. He discovered moreover that passages parallel to those reconstructable for the Lincoln manuscript appear in other texts, including an important work called John Lelamour’s Herbal after a name mentioned in its explicit, and concluded that Lelamour, an otherwise unknown fourteenth-century schoolmaster from Hereford, was the author of the original treatise that Thornton and other scribes used for the composition of their own herbals. The present article will present ample evidence which will demonstrate that Keiser’s hypothesis on a Herefordian pedigree for this textual family cannot be sustained any longer, and that the origins of this textual family should in fact be sought not too far from Scotland. A linguistic approach based on a collection of scribal modifications, both unconscious and conscious ones (i. e. copy mistakes and changes made on purpose by the several copyists), will be used for the task. This will reveal how linguistic variation between the several manuscripts can be profitably used to reconstruct the dialect of the original translation, which will here consequently be named Northern Middle English Translation of Macer Floridus’s De Viribus Herbarum (or Northern Macer for short).

Some Amharic sources for modern Ethiopian history, 1889–1935

1978 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-296 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter P. Garretson
Keyword(s):  
Fourteenth Century ◽  
Addis Ababa ◽  
Literary Tradition ◽  
Written Language ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
New Era ◽  
Imperial Court ◽  
History Of ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Printing Presses

Emperor Menelik's reign (1889–1913) opens a new era in the kind of sources that the historian has at his disposal for the analysis of modern Ethiopian history. During his reign printing presses were set up in the country and spurred a gradual growth in the more widespread use of Amharic, not just as the spoken but also the written language of the imperial court. This is not to say that the Gә'әz literary tradition in Ethiopia disappeared altogether, for some chronicles in Gә'әz continued to be written after 1935, often very similar in form and content to those which have survived for the Gondarine and earlier periods of Ethiopian history. However, Menelik's reign, and the official chronicle of it by Gäbrä Sәllase, mark a significant departure, not least because the chronicle was written in Amharic and not in Gә'әz. There are a few earlier published literary works in Amharic, the songs of the kings of the fourteenth century being the most significant, but it should be emphasized that the Gә'әz tradition continued parallel to the Amharic in the form of tarikä nägäst, i.e the history of kings. Some of these are now preserved at the Institute of Ethiopian Studies at Addis Ababa, like the Gondarine tarikä nägäst which belonged to Nәgus Wäldä Giyorgis, the valuable biography of the grandson of Emperor Tewodros (1855–68), Mäšäša, and a published biography of Ras Makonnen.

scholarly journals BOCA DO INFERNO : REAVENDO A HISTÓRIA

2000 ◽  
Vol 20 (26) ◽  
pp. 29 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roseana Nunes Bacarat de Souz Figueiredo
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Present Article ◽  
The Other ◽  
Literary Works ◽  
Colonial Brazil ◽  
Brazilian History

<p>O presente artigo trata da importância da História para a Literatura e busca retratar uma obra cujo espírito foi justamente esse, o de resgatar a história muitas vezes esquecida ou desprezada. A obra <em>Boca do Inferno</em>, da autora Ana Miranda faz uma reconstituição do Brasil colônia do século XVII e aborda temas políticos e literários com perfeita verossimilhança, ou seja, ela mistura verdade com ficção de tal forma que não se chega a saber quando uma termina para o início da outra. A obra trata de um ponto da vida do poeta Gregário de Matos Guerra e do Padre Antônio Vieira, eles são personagens da própria história que ajudaram a fazer, além de narrar fatos políticos da época. Assim, mesclando história e ficção, Ana Miranda dá vida a uma das melhores obras literárias dos últimos anos que trata daquele começo de história brasileira.</p> <p>The present article talks about the importance of history to the literature and tries to show a work whose spirit waqnted to get back the History, most of the time forgotten or despised. The work “Boca do Inferno”, by the author Ana Miranda made a reconstitution Colonial Brazil in the seventeenth century and talks about political and literary themes with a perfect like hood (verisimilitude), or better, she mixes the reality with fiction in a way that it’s hard to say when one ends and the other begins. The work talks about a point of Gregório de Matos Guerra and Padre Antonio Vieira’s life; They are caracters of the history who helped to do something, besides relating political facts of the time they lived in. This way, mixing History and fiction, Ana Miranda gives life to one of the best literary works of the latest years which talks about the begining of the Brazilian History.</p>

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